KIRKUS REVIEW

A novel plunges a newly acquainted
grandfather and granddaughter into adventures on the French canals.

Colin Aylesford of Bath, England,
hasn’t seen his son, Michael, in almost 10 years. One day, he receives a letter
from his boy stating that Charlotte, his wife, has died in an accident.
Delphine, Michael and Charlotte’s 9-year-old daughter, is “coping as well as
possible.” More than a month later, Colin learns from the police that Michael
has been arrested in France in connection with his wife’s lethal trip down a
flight of stairs. He’s also confessed to pushing her. Colin takes the small
fishing boat he’s built—the Dragonfly—south,
into the French canals. By special arrangement with Charlotte’s mother,
Delphine joins him for the summer. The coupling proves exceptionally awkward,
because Colin himself is a widower and has lived for years as a bachelor.
Delphine is a precocious young lady who requires entertainment and careful
attention paid to Amandine, her sock monkey. In prison, meanwhile, Michael
reflects on a life spent without his own father after a deep estrangement
sundered his parents decades ago. Later on the canals, Colin and Delphine meet
Tyler, an American woman traveling alone who soon becomes instrumental in the
relationship between Colin and his granddaughter. In this novel of quietly
revealed passions, Dunn (Rebecca’s Children,2016, etc.) gives audiences an experience that resists
categorization. It reads like a special sort of coming-of-age tale for parents
with either an empty nest or damaged families, in that Colin feels “stranded on
the shore of his son’s life.” The pain of not raising his son returns with
Delphine, who shares with Michael “the set of her jaw...her wide mouth, and her
slightly crooked teeth.” While a good deal of levity is present, especially
when Delphine utters her starchy catchphrase, “It is not possible,” Dunn’s
story features dense layers of melancholy (Colin “felt sadness like a sharp
blade drawn along the length of him”). Sunlight reaches the canals, but not
before a gasp-inducing finale.

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